


Strong Enough

by bakedgoldfish



Category: The West Wing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-02-22
Updated: 2003-02-22
Packaged: 2019-05-15 04:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14783889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakedgoldfish/pseuds/bakedgoldfish
Summary: He thinks he's not strong enough.





	Strong Enough

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Strong Enough**

**by:** Baked Goldfish 

**Category:** Charlie  
**Rating:** YTEEN **Summary:** He thinks he's not strong enough.  
**Disclaimer:** Yes.  They're mine.  And my name is Madame Chichi, Queen of the Poinsettia People.  


Sometimes, in the dead of night, he thinks he's not strong enough for this. 

He is barely old enough to drink, but he barely gets the chance to go out for drinks anyway.  He spends his days and nights shadowing a man who is larger than life; he knows that none of his high school friends are doing anything like this, and, for that, he thinks he should be grateful.  His high school friends, he knows, are doing one of four things: going to college, working in retail, working on the streets, or laying cold and dead in the ground. 

He wonders, sometimes, if, if not for his father having run out on him and his mother having been a cop, he'd have been one of those statistics on inner city youth violence that his boss reads about.  He wonders, when he sees his dark hands contrasted on white memos, if he wouldn't have been a number. 

He has a sister, who is more of a daughter now.  He wonders if she looks to him like other sisters look to their brothers, or if he sees him more as a father figure than anything else.  He thinks he might not be ready to be a father figure.  He thinks he wasn't ready when their mother died, but he knows it was his responsibility to take full care of his sister, and he is thankful that he was already twenty-one when it happened.  But he thinks, sometimes, he might not be strong enough to keep it up for much longer. 

He knows he has a chance here, a chance to meet powerful people and do a job that matters.  But he also knows that he does not lead a normal life, and for that his heart grows heavy.  There are men his age in college, or in grad school, and they stay up nights to cram for tests; he stays up nights to lend a helping hand in situations involving the phrase "world crisis," and every now and then he wishes he were only studying for a lit exam.  Men his age don't have to worry about putting their sisters through college, and certainly don't have to worry about averting world crises.  They are not strong enough, and he is like most men his age.  He sometimes wishes he led their lives, where he would only worry about school and his girl. 

He hasn't seen Zoey in a week and a half.  He sees her father every day.  He knows this is not normal. 

He sees her father every day, and sometimes his hands shake.  Not from the nervousness of working in such a historic building, so close to such a powerful individual; rather, they shake because he sees how strong the president is, and his staff, and he wonders what made them all think he was strong enough for this.  Sometimes, his hands shake so hard that he can't even pick up a cup of water for fear that he is too weak to hold it. 

He wonders what he is doing here.  He wonders why he didn't fight harder for that messenger job. 

He thinks, sometimes, in the dead of night, when he's working and not studying, that he's not strong enough for this.  That his shoulders might buckle under the weight of these responsibilities, and that he will be an old, weary man before he hits thirty.  That he really will drop that cup of water someday, and that he will fall right after it.  

Then he hears, "Charlie!" because the president still hasn't figured out the intercom, and he chuckles softly to himself.  He knows that, for just this moment, he is strong enough for this, and even if he isn't strong enough tomorrow, it's fine that he is strong enough for the moment that his president needs him. 

He gets up from his desk, and his hands stop shaking. 

-end- 


End file.
